Looking 4 Adventure

It has been raining here for six weeks. My inner highway was pointing east, towards the Piney Woods. It was a great destination for me and a few buddies to look for some diversion. Clouds were building in the west and lingering storms were still rumbling in the east, but the road called and we had a cooler full of wine and beer. Friends were waiting at the camp, which was on stilts. It might rain, but we’d stay high and dry on the 4th of July.

I had a bottle of Garnacha from a winemaker out in West Texas. He was proud of his new red, and he was promising Dolcetto in the future. So we popped it in the back with the Buds and the Shiners, and it barely made it over the bridge at Lake Ray Hubbard.

A couple of the fellows are single. They were in search of some female companionship. One of them, named Buddy, asked me if my intern, Bea, and some of her young, single girlfriends would be there. I mentioned that she was like a daughter to me and that he should set his sights on another horizon. I could drop him off in Athens, and he could take one of those cheap buses to the border, find himself a Boys Town if he wanted to. He opted to stay with us and the beer, a sure thing. Not that his Spanish is so good, but his English could use some tuning up too, especially when it comes to attracting the ladies.

A couple of wine experts were meeting us up at the lake. I had warned them to keep their enthusiasm in check. This was a freakin’ holiday, not a master-of-wine study group. They are serious sommeliers. They wear glasses and spend a lot of time trolling the internet to talk about wine and engage in of all kinds of vinous intercourse. Today would be a pop-the-bottles kind of day. I think they got the picture. Maybe I should have sent them to Boys Town.

The Italians were promising to show up, too. They always promise, but rarely make it. First they have to find their car, and then they have to figure out how to take the highway out of town. Once they get to the trees, they get lost. They are some of the few Italians who don’t have a cell phone, so we can’t reel them in. They usually like people to pick them up and take them to the party. Wouldn’t we all like to have a driver for life?

When we get to the lake some of the folks are preparing the boats. One fellow is already sticking his Johnson in the water, which is cold. And deep, too, he jokes. He likes to embarrass his girlfriend, who is having an affair with his best friend. The friend looks like a re-incarnation of Bob Denver as Gilligan. What a strange trio.

I get a call from Bea in Dallas. The Italians have gone to the airport to pick up a winemaker from Sardegna. They will meet us out there. I tell her about the Garnacha from Texas, and she is nonplussed. We haven’t covered Cannonau yet in her Italian wine studies.

Eventually the Italians arrive, the bespectacled wine experts show up, a bunch of Bea's friends make it. Even the fire-breather makes an appearance. About 20 of us are here in East Texas, on a swollen lake, with a bunch of beer and wine and food, but no dessert.

We raked through the vittles. Chicken-fried steak with a Tuscan red from Petra in Suvereto, called Ebo. Corn and beans and barbecued chicken with a Cortese from Pio Cesare. Not quite the red white and blue. But the white was crisp and cheery and gulpable. One of the old serious wine guys almost fell in the lake he was so pleased with the match. A post-menopausal hanger-on was dogging him, trying to show him the “trail out back”. He was sticking close to the coolers.

A dear friend, who just lost her husband and has a home in the Veneto, pulled out a 3-liter bottle of Acininobili from her collection. It was intense and rich and mellow and way too much to drink. Someone took about a bottle's worth and tried to make a granita with it. Even the wine snobs thought it interesting. In 90-degree weather with 95% humidity, it was refreshing.

But we all were missing that sweet thing. We needed dessert. Yeah, we had watermelon and cherries and peaches, but we needed an iconic American fix on this day. Fortunately, in East Texas, they have DQ. It isn’t Slow Food. I don’t even know if it is food. But once in a while, you cross over the bridge into another country, and you gotta at least try some of the local flavor. It ain't great, but it’s a memory for some of us and an “esperienza particolare”for the Italians.


Afterwards, a well-tanned Sardegnan winemaker took off almost all her clothes, and jumped into the lake. Her wine is now going to be poured at two of the top restaurants in Texas. So say the sommeliers that were there.

Garnacha, indeed!


Images from PLAN59.COM

Between Two Worlds ~ The Vallé D'Aoste

A few years ago I was in Torino, visiting family and friends. A cousin suggested we take a little trip up through Ivrea to the Vallé D'Aoste. Somewhere between Italy and France, another clan, the Valdostans, guard their valleys and their unique culture. It is an interesting turn on the wine road in Italy.

From Ivrea to Mt. Blanc, the A5 highway twists though deeply torn canyons. The language is influenced by the French, though it has never been part of France. This is Italy with sauce and butter, and Italian grapes with French names. It is the smallest region in Italy with the lowest population. But this is not a drive-through kind of place.

My first contact with the wines of the Vallé D'Aoste was back in 1982. We were importing the wines of Ezio Voyat, through the Enoteca de Rham. The red, Chambave Rouge, was a hit. We had the 1961, and it sold, wholesale, for about $20. It was rich and acidic and deep and full and gorgeous. I remember it like it was yesterday.

My last bottle of '61

The white was a Passito, and it reminded me of a cross between a Vin Santo and an Oloroso Sherry. The Italians went crazy for these wines. A few clients still ask me about them. I wish we had some more.

This is a place to spend two or three days and amble the 100 miles from Courmayeur to Donnas. While summertime is a great period, the harvest time of September-October is rich with the bounty. Along the country roads, little stands display the mushrooms, the honey, the artisanal pasta, the infusions of berries and fruits with the grappa. Wood crafts are especially enticing. It is impossible to resist something like a one-of-a-kind wood turned Coppa dell' Amicizia for the famous Caffè alla Valdostana. Bring on the cool nights for this fortified treat.

This all started when I was doing research on the difference between Donnaz (now called Donnas) and Carema. Two wines from two regions, but really neighbors. Nebbiolo-based wines, though the grapes are called by other names, some say Picoutener, others say Picotendro.

This from the Italian Trade Commission: “A region wide DOC known as Valle d'Aosta or Vallée d'Aoste covers 23 categories of wine whose names are given in Italian and French, the official second language. These include the longstanding DOCs of Donnas and Enfer d'Arvier, as well as the white wines of Morgex and La Salle, whose vineyards in the shadow of Mont Blanc are reputed to be the highest in continental Europe. Valle d'Aosta has no IGT.

Valle d'Aosta grape varieties range from Piedmontese (Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Moscato) to French (Chardonnay, the Pinots, Gamay), to the teutonic Muller Thurgau called in for mountain duty. But the most intriguing wines of Valle d'Aosta stem from varieties it calls its own. These include the Petit Rouge of Enfer d'Arvier and Torrette, the Blanc de Valdigne of Morgex and La Salle, the Petite Arvine of the varietal white of the name, the Vien for the red wine of Nus and the Malvoisie (apparently a mutation of Pinot Gris) for the rare dessert white of Nus.”

So this is an interesting region for the wine lover, Italian and French alike.

Wine Trail-From north to south
* Cave du Vin Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle (tel. 0165800331) is located in Morgex at the foot of Mont Blanc.
* Aymavilles has two wineries: Cave des Onze Communes (tel. 0165902912), which is the most important cooperative winery in the valley, offering wine sales, tastings and walks through the vineyards; and Azienda Les Cretes (tel. 0165902274), which has a cellar with a view of four castles and the vineyards.
* Aosta's main vineyard is the Institut Agricole Regional (tel. 0165553304). It is run by the monks of St. Bernard, and is known for its table wines. You can tour the cellar, the vineyards and the farm museum.
* Chambave's winery, La Crotta di Vegneron (at Piazza Roncas 2, tel. 016646670), produces Chambave wine as well as several other DOC wines.
* In Donnas, visit the Caves Cooperatives de Donnas at Via Roma 97 (tel. 0125807096) that offers tours of the cellars and wine tastings. Donnas is the only wine town in the region and is noted for its wine production.

Aosta Valley typical food:
Capriolo alla valdostana: venison stewed in red wine with vegetables, herbs, grappa, cream.
Carbonade: salt-cured beef cooked with onions and red wine in a rich stew.
Minestra di castagne e riso: thick soup of rice cooked in milk with chestnuts.
Polenta alla rascard: cornmeal cooked, cooled and sliced, then baked with layers of Fontina and a ragout of beef and sausage.
Risotto alla valdostana: Fontina, toma, Parmigiano Reggiano and butter make this one of the creamiest of rice dishes.
Seupa de gri: barley soup with potatoes, onions, seasonal vegetables, salt pork.


Festivals
JANUARY
Verrès: Historical Carnival Pageant and Parade: Thousands of people come for this delightful presentation, which recounts the inheritance disputes between the beautiful daughters of Francesco di Challand, a local aristocrat. On the Saturday before Carnival, a costumed procession winds its way through the streets to Town Hall, where the Mayor hands a gold key to Caterina, thus making her Lady of the Manor. Her first official act is to invite the crowd to celebrate in her castle. The festivities last for three days, culminating in an incredibly colorful (and noisy!) carnival parade on Tuesday.

Pont-Saint-Martin: Roman Carnival: This is probably the only place in the world where a host of toga-clad tribunes, senators, legions, guards and nymphs celebrate Carnival with a real chariot race! The origins are lost in time, but don't date as far back as the town bridge (pictured at left), an engineering feat built 2000 years ago by the imperial legions. The festivities end on Tuesday, when a straw devil is burned in effigy under the bridge.

FEBRUARY
Courmayeur: Carnival: Traditional folk dances welcome the arrival of spring during this very popular pageant, which features the bear (whose early appearance has the same meaning as our groundhog's), the mule (whose tail sweeps away evil winds), and loads of tiny mirrors (to frighten off evil spirits).

Nus: Historical Carnival: A large procession of costumed villagers follows the municipal band throughout the entire city, accompanied by colorful floats and hundreds of masked figures. Free soup for all at the end of the day.

Saint-Vincent: Children's Carnival: The festivities begin with the investiture of the Little Mayor, and for the next eleven days the grade school kids rule this spa town. Watch how you behave around them too: the squad of “little guardians” is allowed to administer fines (all proceeds are donated to charity).

MARCH
Pila: Snow Carnival

APRIL
Brissogne: Rebatta Competition. This popular local game features a large spiked ball balanced on the end of a pipe and tossed up to 600 yards.

Pollein: Tsan Competition. Local farmers probably invented this game, which resembles a rudimentary folk version of baseball.

MAY
Nus: Vien de Nus Festival celebrates the two local wines, Rouge and Malvoisie. Performances by local folklore groups are followed by a costumed parade and an outdoor banquet for one and all, featuring fritters, salami and other tasty dishes washed down with the new vintages.

JUNE
Gressoney-Saint-Jean: Festival of St. John. It begins the evening of June 23rd, when a crowd of residents and guests walk from one neighborhood to another to witness a series of bonfires. Each little burg offers its visitors wine and snacks, and the next day everyone puts on their very best Walser costumes and attends high mass to witness the blessing of the sheep.

JULY
Saint-Rhemy-en-Bosses: Ham Festival, featuring the renowned local varieties.

AUGUST
Gaby: Polenta Picnic. Everyone is invited to participate in the cooking and the eating.

La Thuile: Bataille de reines and Shepherds' Festival (Sunday after August 15th). The hillsides of the Little Saint Bernard come alive each year for this festival, celebrated by folklore groups and local bands. The crowning moment comes in the afternoon when the farmers pick the “festival queen”: the most valuable milk cow. The lucky winner gets to participate at the finals in Aosta, one of the most enthusiastically awaited events of the year in this rural region.

SEPTEMBER
Chambave: Grape Festival (last Sunday of the month). Folklore groups and local bands perform while everyone attends a huge outdoor banquet. At the end of the day the local authorities choose the year's best variety of grapes.

OCTOBER
Donnas - Grape-Harvest Festival

Gressan: Apple Festival (second Sunday of the month), featuring the local cider and a vast assortment of apple desserts.

Aosta: Bataille de reines Finals (next-to-last Sunday of the month).

DECEMBER
Aosta: International Hot Air Balloon Encounter. One entire week of events (including public excursions over the city), culminating in the spectacular (and dangerous) ascent of 13,000-foot Mont Blanc.

Almost everywhere: Living Nativity Scenes (December).

Cervinia: Torchlit Procession on Skis (December).
List of festivals courtesy of http://www.hostetler.net/

For my part, I am looking forward to the Fontina cheese festival in late autumn in the town of Aosta. The farmers will be bringing their cheeses down from the higher altitudes for this fête. Hope to see you there, with a hunk of Fontina in one hand and a glass of Donnas, or Enfer d’Arvier, in the other.

Where Have You Gone?

As folks pour into Italy for vacation, looking for that special trattoria or isolated stretch of sandy beach, what are they finding?

More and more, we turn to faraway places to re-fuel our oft-depleted enthusiasm for our wells of inspiration. People are worn out from the hustle and incessant pull for their attention. A lunch break, and 50 e-mails show up, 25 requiring some action or response. Connectivity has tied us up in a web of our own making, and one that is hard to untangle. We have our little victories, and our passion gets acknowledged once in a while. But the escape to another place, to stop the world, and step onto a little piazza for a cool glass of wine and a plate of fresh anything. Now that, for some of us, would be like hitting it out of the park.

Here’s my proposal. Don’t plan your next trip to Italy. Yes, get your plane ticket and rental car (optional), but save your fretting over where to stay and where to eat. Now don’t do this in August. But from late September on, how about arriving in Rome or Milan, stepping outside and seeing which way the wind blows you? I wonder how many of us could do that?

What’s my point?


A few days ago a colleague e-mailed me; he was in Florence and wanted to know where to go to eat. I took 20 minutes and arranged a couple of options for him and his family. Nice, not touristic. Bam, done. Later in the day, he e-mails me back, tells me to add another restaurant to my list. He found a different one, on his own. If I could tell you how many times this has happened to me. But it’s OK, Ma, because in reality, they only needed someone to get them out the door. Then Italy would take it from there.

A winemaker friend once took me to a little spot in Tuscany above the Castello Banfi. A little place whose name I don’t recall at the moment. It seemed like a deserted film set, up on a hill. Dusty, quiet. As we got to the end of the road into the village, it dead-ended. There was a dog barking and dust flying, kind of eerie. My host took me through a door that had glass beads covering the opening. No one was inside. We took a seat and listened to some Coltrane-like jazz. About five minutes passed and a gent showed up. He had been running to the market to get a few things. The meal that followed was simple but memorable.

Had this scene occurred back home, how many of us would have waited or even stayed upon entering a deserted restaurant at lunchtime? By the way the patio had a view of Montalcino worth sharing, as the accompanying picture shows.

Sharing, now that’s a whole ‘nother subject. But let me digress. If one takes a trip to Italy with this criteria - that you will stay in the level of luxury you are acclimated to - it's a virtual guarantee that you will not come into contact with Italians and the people and places that make Italy so desirable.

Tracy from Ischia laments on her blog about the wealthy Americans with their Hummer-Yachts who fear of venturing off their platform to experience a typical restaurant or see a vineyard that doesn’t look like a McMansion with vines.

I say Jump! Wander! Lose your Blackberry and find your soul. Go to Italy, open up to your instincts and round the bases. That's if you have the guts to go there and simply do it.

From: A Moron Re: Amarone

A weaver of fiaschi, not tales

There is a fellow who I run into from time to time. He likes to practice his Italian, lived there for a while. Thinks he’s an Italian. Which is about as much as I am Irish. He likes to say things he picked up in the dialect of the area, near Verona. Really funny, because the guy, well, you never know if he is telling the truth or making up a story. Really don’t mind, if the story made up is good. But seems lately he is running out of material, or memories. So he calls me up and starts telling me about this white Amarone he had when he lived over there, back in the day. Now I hear these kinds of things from time to time. The other day I got a call from a restaurauteur who was looking for a red Galestro, although why anyone would be looking for the red version of a tasteless white wine is beyond me. Oops, that was snob talk. Anyway, back to the Veneto and the white Amarone.

Italians are great improvisers. I remember a dear friend once telling another person about the process of governo in Tuscany. I had just studied it up for some kind a wine certification, so governo was on my punch list. Well, my friend had wrapped his tongue around this tall tale and he even had me going, though I knew what he was saying was dead wrong. Big deal, The Italian says, it doesn’t matter how we get to Rome, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. It might be on the Autostrada, it might be on the Salaria, but we’ll stop for lunch and eventually arrive. Kind of like this posting. We have definitely stepped off the freeway and into the rambling country road on this one.


Seems that my middle-aged white Amarone yarn spinner claims that he and a winemaker, that he worked with, made a white Amarone. I ask, thinking to keep this on the straight and narrow, if perhaps he got it confused with Recioto of Soave? No, no, that was not it, it was a white grape that went into the blend in the Valpolicella, many years ago, and it was dry and bitter and white. And it came in a demijohn wrapped in straw, like fiaschi. Now, he so believes this that he has to ride it out to the end even if it means going over the cliff. In the meantime, I am almost believing that someone could have grabbed some Vespaiolo or Garganega or Passerina and what the heck, tried an experiment. The professor told me the other day that Amarone was a mistake. By the way, the professor is a real person who is a liaison for a couple of wineries, one based in Valpolicella. I’m thinking of asking him tomorrow if he has ever heard of this white Amarone. But what does it matter, do we really need another bitter, over ripe, dried out Italian white wine, that would probably be overpriced? It was hard enough selling Trebbiano’s from Abruzzo and Coda di Volpe’s from Segesta so many years ago before the computer age.

So where were we?

If my friend is reading this (and he is, he even knows who he is), he can comment. He loves to do that, in fact I often read the comments he leaves on his web site ( No, not you, the other one, this isn’t about you) and they weave a little twilight zone of existence in those few lines that his otherwise flowery posts don’t cover. The invisible world of the internet, this frontal-lobe chit chat.

In any event, if we ever find out if there ever was a white Amarone, or not, between then, we should have something to open. A very quick note.

I recently had a pizza, with a San Marzano tomato topping that was more sweet than savory. At least they didn’t sully it with garlic. For some reason, the Brunello we had with it seemed to work. The pizza was a flat Margherita, a tad undercooked. Brunello and Pizza, why not?

Besides, the white Amarone hadn’t yet chilled.

The Sound of One Nose Smelling

Between Monterey and Big Sur there is a Zen Monastery. Guests are welcome between May and August, to hike, meditate, eat vegetarian and soak in the natural hot springs. But no electronic devices are allowed. No laptops, Blackberries, Ipods, none of that sort. It’s a great place to turn the world off. Let it go. Give it a rest.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to tune up one’s senses, hearing, sight, smell. Lately, there has been a bit written on the wine Supertasters, reviewers and critics. There is also a strain of Super Smellers, those whose olfactory sensitivity is in uber-drive to the rest of the folks on the planet. It is something I am fascinated with. As a child, my father proclaimed I was a nose that a little boy grew around. It got better as I grew up.

Some of my high school classmates called me eagle beak, banana nose, the Schnozz; those are a few I haven’t forgotten. But I am not bitter. I have had the last laugh, My heightened sense of smell has helped me in my career and passion, on the wine trail.

Almost 20 years ago I read a book, Perfume, by Patrick Suskind. In the book a young man was born who had an enormous capacity for scent. The author described, in almost excruciating detail, the level at which this character could perceive aromas in his world. He was being trained as a perfume maker, and would be considered the greatest in the world (it’s a fictional account). But one passage, in which this boy could smell certain smells from blocks away, blew my mind. For the next few months I would sit in a sales room, a restaurant, an airport, and open my sense up to “see” what I could pick up. It was incredible. Perfumes, body scents, fabric, food, combustion, rotting, vegetal, they were all there. I could pick up a perfume from 20 feet away. My game would be to try and guess the maker. I got pretty good.

At another Zen monastery many years before, on an assignment, a monk warned me of getting attached to any sense, part of their training. At the monastery in Big Sur, while it is a bit freer in allowing one to open up to that kind of experience, one is still reminded to not become too attached to any worldly thing. I copy.

The walk to the coast, through the pine forest, with the resin of the tree and the balmy breeze off the ocean, reminded me of an afternoon in Iraklion, on the island of Crete. A run this week, in my neighborhood, picked up a scent of some kind of vegetation that transported me back 40+ years, to my model car days. Some resin, a dusty aroma and bam, I was 12 again. Too bad I didn’t have those 12 year old legs to get me up the hill I was facing.

There are exercises to heighten you sense of smell. And you can prepare your nose to become more aware and sensitive to the aromas around you.
Take a look at this picture, what kind of smell does it bring to you? A hot, fresh, steaming fried apple pie, with cinnamon. You’re sitting in your aunt’s parlor, and she brings a plate of these fresh from the kitchen miracles. What do you smell? How old are you when you recall this smell? Where in the world are you?


Or how about this one, the fish market in Venice? It could be one of many sites around the world, summer is starting, it’s 11 O'clock in the morning, starting to get hot. There are sardines and anchovies nearby, the swordfish and the tuna are also close. They were swimming in the ocean in them morning and now they sit and wait for their transformation. What do you smell? Is it pleasant, or do you have a problem envisioning the aromas in you mind? At this point, you know, its all in your mind.

And that is really an important part of the olfactory sense. We humans like to enlarge our experiences. We aren’t as lucky as the beagle, whose nose has about 200 million scent-receptor cells. A human's nose has about 5 million. The beagle is the super-smeller. We can, however, elaborate with words.


Want to learn more about wine? Grow roses, or visit rose gardens. I have a few that I have gone back to over the years, this one from my alma mater in Santa Clara. I have learned as much from the roses as I did from some of my professors. Honestly.

This is not a big mystery; the wine trail is filed with teachers all along the way. One only needs, from time to time, to turn off the electronic devices and step out into the world. It is one of the ways to learn how to become a super-sleuth in the scent sector. Or you could check into the Zen monastery for a stay.



Further reading
The Nobel Prize for mapping the sense of smell

That Makes Scents - An olfactory lab activity

Keep on Trocken'...

Sec on the Beach
Cool white wine in a warm climate is a great pleasure. While I like fruity Rieslings and dessert wines, right now I am looking at dry wines, the seccos of the Italian landscape.

Picture the Southern Italian scene, Maratea in Calabria or Gargano in Puglia. Fresh seafood, cool water, warm sand. Primitivo doesn’t sound too good at that moment. I’m looking for a bone dry white to soak up the heat. Something for the shoreline of the mind. Delicate, lithe, tanned and toned.



Now We’re Cooking
Inland, perhaps the Sila forest or the Marche foothills, where the climate is a little cooler. Still some fine access to the fresh fish off the coast. There, a white still sounds good, perhaps a Pecorino or a Mantonico.
Pulling a few fresh vegetables from the garden, zucchini or arugula, and making a salad with a nice filet of tuna or chicken. A Grechetto from Umbria or an Ansonica from Tuscany would fit the bill. Refreshing, light and dry. For the next few months that is my mantra. And try to escape the heat.

Back to the Adriatic coast, a few other wines to consider. The lowly Trebbiano I have already written about. It is already in the refrigerator. Add a little Verdicchio, perhaps from Jesi or Matelica. While the Trebbiano is drier and more acidic, the Verdicchio still qualifies.


Clean Country Air
Popping up to the Veneto on the way to Trentino and Alto Adige. One of my favorites is a blend from Maculan, the Pino and Toi. I’m looking at a certain wavelength, what the Germans call Trocken, and the three grape blend of Maculan gets on the boat. Clean, hillside vineyards, refreshed by the Alpine breezes, maintained by Lake Garda.

Muller Thurgau and Sauvignon in the Trentino and Alto Adige also will be spending the summer under the Texas sun. With some of the highest elevated vineyards in Europe, the white wines have an allure, a quiet, seductive quality in hushed tones that echoes across the valley, making the Austrians jealous.


The Great Escape
There’s a quality of these wines that didn't exist 30 years ago. Maybe it’s the yeast, maybe cold maceration, or perhaps just the availability of refrigeration, for the fermentation tanks and the containers that ship them over. We warm the planet so our wine can be cool. Always a trade off.

I can get lost sampling the whites up in the northern hills, and the foods that go so well during this long, hot season here in the Southern Plains.



Photo Finish
This all started with a German wine that was opened recently. It was a simple white, Riesling, but dry, Trocken.

The Vinho Verde from Portugal was also at the starting gate, bucking to beak lose and sprint. Now it’s a simple, but long race to October, to get through the hot muggy summer that just commenced.

While the Italians will be flocking to the coastlines, drinking all manner of wine, I’ll be thinking about them as I polish off a bottle or two of the new wave of great white wines, from the wine trail in Italy.

The Global Brotherhood of the Grape

The Vigneron and the Negociant
It could be a scene in Bordeaux or Barolo, the actual global position isn’t crucial. A man (or a woman) has a piece of property with grapes growing. He’s tied to the land, nurturing and gathering the ripe grapes into clusters and pressing them into service. He puts much of his faith in his agent, his representative to the world, to see that the finished wine goes out to all corners where it is desired. Liquid emissaries. There is often a simple handshake, a reassuring pat on the back, a bond that links this global grape group.

With change in the air and the once-accepted forms of dissemination being challenged, there will still be a need for the land, the grape and people to move it forward. You might someday be able to order a wine from a Castello in Tuscany and have it delivered 48 hours later to your abode; someone still needs to turn crushed grapes into liquid magic.

The Winemaker
Once, the winemaker was a solitary figure, huddled in his cave, working his alchemy over the barrels. That still must happen. But the winemaker now must know what is going on in his global community. Weather patterns and buying trends, fashions in taste and the pulse of the client, all these are now factors in his process. There must not only be winemaking, there must be vision, inspired by the miracle, but taken to the next level. In part, inspired by world competition clamoring for the attention of the wine lover, the wine merchant and the restaurant owner. No easy task, and one that is not self renewing. After one spends months plowing their fields in the vineyards, the winemaker must often go out into the market and till some more.

The Restaurateur
What must he do these days? Everyone wants you to eat their food, if it is in a restaurant or a retail market. Preparing food in a restaurant is a labor intensive process. Finding labor, these days, is getting increasingly more challenging as a regime seems to be preparing to repel the huddled masses yearning to be free.

The restaurateur’s domain is relentless. There is no respite, no escape, nothing to do but to forge ahead onward through the fog.

The Patronage
The endgame for the finished product, a table in a dimly lit room with a few plates and glasses. Here, the grapes finish their journey with an Ad hoc coronation; no 21 gun salute, no brass band. Amidst the clinking of the glasses and the din of the room, the silent spirit spills into the crevice of a soul here, a partaker there. The journey from the vine to the goblet reaches the promised land of the palate. All this, because of the brotherhood of the berry. A global community making sure this life enhancing phenomenon travels across the planet to your glass, to your dimly lit room, with the hope to spread some light and joy.

The Men in the Middle
Behind the glass curtain are the unseen ones, part visionary, part brigand. These are the charmers, the conjurers, the ones who must find a way to get the ships to shore. A little Columbus, a little Capone. Less dependant on conspiracy and more on improvisation. A group of men and women looking to raise their families and live their life doing something they want to do, because they love it. And it shows on their faces. They have a serenity and a happiness attained from finding their way, connecting with their global tribe.



Photos from the wine trail by the author

Featured Father ~ A Modern Day Marco Polo

Watch out, Bin Laden, "AK-47 Rossi" is on your tail

Enrico “Hank” Rossi has the wandering spirit. Oh, and he likes to wear black, makes it easy to pack a bag and disappear for months at a time. In the shot above he is at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border testing out his skills. He is my featured father for Dad’s day.

From the Khyber Pass to Lalibela, before it is all said and done, Hank will visit almost everyplace his heart desires on earth. He just returned from a 2 month journey across the Silk Trail, spent last Christmas holiday in Egypt and Ethiopia.


That’s not to say he doesn’t have an interest in Western Culture, big cities, wine, women and song. He’s also been known to lose his way in the City of Lights, looking for Robuchon's latest atelier, or taking a dirt road down an unnamed trail in the Marche, in search of Rosso Piceno and roasted cinghiale.


In other words, Hank is an adventurer. He has an insatiable thirst for cultures of the world and he isn’t afraid to take risks in going out to meeting up with them on their turf, in their ambience.


And while he doesn’t shun luxury, he will walk up steep grades of trail in the Himalayas or climb Mount Kilimanjaro, not expecting a glass of Lafite when he arrives at camp. Sometimes, warm goat milk will be just fine.

Don’t take me wrong, Hank loves good, even great, wine. He has opened up and shared many great bottles of Barolo and Brunello in his cool, modern Turtle Creek flat in Dallas. He loves art and technology and beautiful women (he’s even been know to marry one or two of them); in short, Hank has a lust for life like I have seldom seen in anyone I have ever met.

He celebrated his 65th a year or two ago and that seems to be when he really started making plans to see even more places and be away for even more and more extended periods of time.


When he was a young father, Hank started a business that he didn’t necessarily like. But he worked it hard and he prospered. And then he turned it over to his kids, gave them a great basis for a living. But all along, I got the sense that his heart wasn’t really in the work, there was something else that kept him engaged. He was training for life's big adventure.

I would liken him to the tortoise rather than the hare; he is a marathoner not a sprinter. But what a run it has been.

I sometimes live vicariously through him, especially with all the travels to places that I might not always have a desire to visit. Me, I’m happy to go to a little fishing village along the coast of Italy and stay there for a week or two. Not that he hasn’t also done that. Last summer he and his wife Phillissa rented an apartment in San Benedetto del Tronto, in the Marche, on the beach of the Adriatic, for 2 months. One of my favorite places on earth. That time I was “un po invidia.” But not for long.

So what’s my point in this today? Nothing, except to acknowledge one who is without fear and one who knows that time is a precious commodity. The lesson I take from Hank's life is, we should not waste one minute of it. Live life to the fullest with a sense of urgency, this is not a dress rehearsal.

Climb your mountain.

Happy Father’s Day, Hank!



Hank’s Blog

Vines In Exile

An Italian immigrant family, new to America, plants some grapevines that they brought from their homeland.

100 years later a land developer in Northern California buys the property for a housing development. The vines, struggling and surviving, all these years in exile, now face the ax. They had a long life, their family is long gone, now part of the American experiment. So?

What should we do with these vines? If they came here today they would be here illegally. Maybe they brought disease within their roots, a type that isn’t right for this landscape. Sure they have adapted, and survived, often for years without care or attention. But they are in the way; they are not part of the future plan for the place. So why shouldn’t they be taken out?

In places like Cucamonga, Hollister and Napa, the immigrant's vines are losing out. Old dreams replaced with newer ones.
Cabernet is more profitable in Napa, so out goes the 100 year old Petite Sirah vines, dry farmed, hearty characters. In come the McCabernets.

Mataro and Zinfandel in Hollister, must it also go back over the fence? Urban sprawl needs houses for the American citizens.

Barbera and Calabrese vines in Cucamonga are declared enemy combatants, they are here without papers and no one knows how they got in. But they must be sequestered and all this must be sorted out.

In the valleys above Santa Barbara, vines were planted by undocumented Sicilians. Damaschino, Carricante, Perricone, all must go. This is a premium area for the elite whites, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

In Italy, they find a neglected vine, resuscitate it, and voila a new heirloom is brought back into the family. A pile of rubble, maybe there since 65 AD, sits until someone finds a cave underneath and an ancient city and culture is brought back to life. It happens all the time. Over there.

I visited my Alma Mater the other day. There is an adobe wall in the garden area. It was from the 1700’s, in an area where the wine was made. This wall has been restored, propped up as a reminder of the toils of others who made our present lives so much more comfortable. It happens, in little doses, often for symbolic purposes.


The sense I have gotten, these few days on the edge of the Pacific, is that the ways of those who came before us are worthy of retaining if it doesn’t get in the way of who we think we are and where we want to go. Is that any different than they way this culture acted towards the indigenous Americans in the past? How far away must we send them? Should the Calabrese grapes and the Sicilian immigrants be returned as well?

The Charbono of Ernie Fortino, the Barbera of John Filice, The Mataro of Bob Enz, have we treated these vines and humans like the treasures they are? Or have we declared them to longer be of interest to us, have we put them on their Trail of Tears?

Has the California that I grew up in long disappeared under the wall of time?